Who is the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition?

Our mission is to reverse the trend of mass incarceration in Colorado. We are a coalition of nearly 7,000 individual members and over 100 faith and community organizations who have united to stop perpetual prison expansion in Colorado through policy and sentence reform.

Our chief areas of interest include drug policy reform, women in prison, racial injustice, the impact of incarceration on children and families, the problems associated with re-entry and stopping the practice of using private prisons in our state.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

The Denver Post
A decade ago, there were 3,578 adult
Latinos in Colorado's state prisons. At the end of the last fiscal year,
there were more than twice that, according to the Colorado Department
of Corrections.
Colorado does not have the same problematic
numbers as the federal prison system, where more than half of all
prisoners sentenced to time behind bars last year were Latino. But the
percentage of Latino prisoners in Colorado does outstrip the size of
that population. Colorado's Latino population now stands at 20.9
percent. In prisons, Latinos account for 33 percent of all those locked
up, Colorado corrections department figures show.
Latinos have consistently made up about 30 percent of the state's prison population for the past decade.
Part of that increase in total numbers is due to the increase in the Latino population.
But another factor, according to the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform
Coalition, is likely due to the fact that there is more street-level
policing in neighborhoods with high Latino populations.
"There has
been consistent evidence over time that people of color are
significantly more likely to be arrested and incarcerated, particularly
for drug offenses," said Christie Donner, executive director of the
coalition.
Figures for Colorado's inmate population show some
other disparities in prison populations related to race.
African-American males and females now make up 20 percent and 15 percent
of their respective prison populations, while that racial group
totals only 4.3 percent of Colorado's population.
Meanwhile,
Caucasian men and Caucasian women represent 44 percent and 52 percent
of their respective prison populations in Colorado. But Caucasians,
who are not identified as of Hispanic descent in the latest U.S. Census
report, comprise about 70 percent of the general population in the
state.
Colorado's incarceration figures for Latinos may be out of
proportion to population, but they are more in balance than the latest
national count for Latino prisoners in federal prisons. Latinos now
outnumber all other ethnic groups sentenced to serve time in federal
prisons for felonies, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
In
2012, more than half of all people being sent to federal prisons for
felony crimes are Latino, commission numbers show. Latinos, who make up
16 percent of the U.S. population, added up to 50.3 percent of those
sentenced to federal prisons. African-Americans made up 9.7 percent and
Caucasians 26.4 percent.
Thirty-three percent of the Latinos sent
to federal penitentiaries were there for immigration crimes, including
illegal crossing and immigrant smuggling. Immigration crimes have been
responsible for most of the increase in the number of Latinos sent to
prison in the last decade, the commission's statistics show.